Syllabus of Three Lectures on the Science of Language: And Its Place in General Education
(Excerpt from Syllabus of Three Lectures on the Science of...)
Excerpt from Syllabus of Three Lectures on the Science of Language: And Its Place in General Education, Etymological dictionary of the English language containing Etymology, Pronunciation, and Meanings Etymology of Names of Places; Words and Phrases from the Latin, the Greek, and Modern Foreign Languages.
Friedrich Max Müller, generally known as Max Müller, was a German scholar of comparative language, religion, and mythology. Müller’s special areas of interest were Sanskrit philology and the religions of India.
Background
Friedrich Max Müller was born on December 6, 1823, in Dessau, Duchy of Anhalt, German Confederation to German lyric poet Wilhelm Müller and Adelheid Müller (née von Basedow). His godfather was a German composer, guitarist, pianist, conductor, and critic Carl Maria von Weber. He was named after his eldest maternal uncle Friedrich as also after the main character of his father’s opera ‘Der Freischütz’ called Max. Many official documents including his marriage certificate and university register record his name as Maximilian.
Education
When he was six years old, Müller started his education at the gymnasium (grammar school) at Dessau. Later in 1839, he attended the Nicolai School at Leipzig, where he studied music and classics.
Müller entered Leipzig University in 1841 to study philology, leaving behind his early interest in music and poetry. Müller received his degree in 1843. His final dissertation was on Spinoza's Ethics. He also displayed an aptitude for classical languages, learning Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit.
Müller traveled to Berlin in 1844 to study with Friedrich Schelling, whose lectures proved to be very influential to his intellectual development. Whilst in Berlin, he was also given access to the Chambers collection of Sanskrit manuscripts. At Schelling’s request, Müller translated some of the most important passages of the Upanishads, which he understood to be the greatest outcome of Vedic literature. He emphasized the necessity of studying the ancient hymns of the Veda in order to be able to appreciate the historical growth of the Indian mind during the Vedic age. Müller was convinced that all mythological and religious theories would remain without a solid foundation until the whole of the Rig Veda had been published.
To further his work on the Rig Veda, Müller came to London in June 1846 to work with manuscripts in the library of the East India Company, which eventually underwrote much of the expense of printing Müller’s Rig Veda. While Müller initially came to England to spend three weeks in Oxford, he stayed in England, making it his home for the remainder of his life. Müller was visiting Paris in early 1848 when the revolution began, but he and his valuable manuscripts were able to return unscathed to England. In 1849 Oxford University Press published Müller’s first volume of the Rig Veda, the sixth and final volume of which was not published until 1874. In 1851 he was appointed Professor of Modern European Languages at Oxford and was made full professor in 1854. He became a naturalized British citizen in 1855.
In 1860, Müller was considered for Professor of Sanskrit at Oxford. The chair has been left vacant due to the death of the previous professor, and Müller was by far the most eligible candidate. However, at this time in Oxford, candidates for professorships were elected by all those holding MA degrees from the University (mostly clergymen), and much more attention was paid to a candidate’s political and religious view than to his academic qualifications. Müller’s Christianity, which was of a liberal Lutheran variety, was brought under considerable scrutiny, and the supporters of Müller’s evangelical competitor even waged a defamation campaign against him in the press. Their efforts were successful, for the post went to the less qualified candidate.
After Müller’s bitter disappointment at being passed over for the professorship, the focus of his career shifted slightly. He continued to work on his monumental Rig Veda, but most of his time was devoted to the preparation of books and lectures on comparative philosophy and mythology written with the public in mind. He delivered a series of very popular lectures at the Royal Institution, London, on the science of language in 1861 and 1863, which were quickly published and reprinted fifteen times between 1861 and 1899.
In 1868 the University of Oxford created a new Chair of Comparative Philology, and Müller became its first occupant. This new post was accompanied by a decrease in lecturing responsibilities and an increase in salary, both of which were welcome changes. After twenty-five years of service at Oxford, he formed a small society of the best Oriental scholars from Europe and India, and they began to publish a series of translations of the Sacred Books of the East. Müller devoted the last thirty years of his life to writing and lecturing on comparative religion. In 1873 he published Introduction to the Science of Religion, and he delivered lectures on the subject at the Royal Institution (1870) and Westminster Abbey (1873). In 1878 Müller inaugurated the annual Hibbert lectures on the science of religion at Westminster Abbey, and he was invited to deliver the Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology at the University of Glasgow. He temporarily relocated to Glasgow in 1888 and began his first course of lectures on the subject of "natural religion." An audience of 1, 400 attended his first lecture, including a large number of Glasgow professors, representatives of Glasgow churches, and other members of the public. Müller gave an unsurpassed four courses, totaling 62 lectures, between 1888-1892.
Müller’s other important project during those years was founding and editing a series of English translations of Indian, Arabic, Chinese, and Iranian religious texts. Müller translated selections from the hymns of the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, and the Dhammapada, a Buddhist text, and also contributed to The Sacred Books of the East published by Oxford University Press.
Müller’s health began deteriorating in 1898, but he continued his writing, publishing The Six Systems of Hindu Philosophy in 1899, only a year before his death. During this period he also produced several essays and material for his autobiography.
Friedrich Max Müller died on October 28, 1900, at his home in Oxford and was buried in Holywell Cemetery, in Oxford.
Friedrich Max Müller was a remarkable scholar of comparative language, religion, and mythology, who interested in Sanskrit philology and the religions of India.
Max Müller is the recipient of the Order of Merit (1874) and the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art (1875).
After Müller's death, a memorial fund was opened at Oxford for "the promotion of learning and research in all matters relating to the history and archaeology, the languages, literatures, and religions of ancient India." The Goethe Institutes in India are named Max Müller Bhavan in his honor, as is a street (Max Mueller Marg) in New Delhi.
Max Müller was raised as a Lutheran and remained one all his life.
Müller’s views on religion were shaped by German idealism and the comparative study of language. From the former he derived the conviction that at heart religion is a consciousness of the Infinite; from the latter, he formed the belief that religion could only be understood through comparison. As he famously put it, "He who knows one, knows none."
Like many of his contemporaries, Müller believed that genuine understanding of various aspects of life, including religion, required knowledge of their origins. Accordingly, he expected the science of religion to determine "how religion is possible; how human beings, such as we are, come to have any religion at all; what religion is, and how it came to be what it is." In pursuing this aim he rejected any reliance on divine revelation - a move more unusual then than now - and sought to limit himself to sense perception and reason, two universally accepted sources of knowledge.
Politics
Max Müller supported the Brahmo Samaj movement. He believed that Brahmo Samja will produce an Indian form of Christianity since he was too desperate to bring Christianity into India so that the religion of the Hindus be doomed.
Under his guidance, the British empire funded a huge sum of money for education reforms in India.
Views
As a philologist, Müller was critical of contemporaries who sought to identify the origins of religion through ethnography. His critique of the then-prevalent theory of fetishism (belief in the magical and protective powers of material objects) is remarkable both for its recognition of Africa’s linguistic and cultural history and diversity and for its identification of the ways in which European Christians constructed images of non-Christians and their religions. Instead of using the prevailing ethnographic approach, Müller pursued the science of religion by studying words and texts. He acknowledged that religion had developed differently in different linguistic spheres and that his training limited him to a consideration of Aryan peoples - that is, speakers of Indo-European languages. Nevertheless, he was convinced that the Rigveda provided unparalleled access to the process by which religion arose.
Müller’s account of that process was largely lexicographical. He began with words and their meanings and sought to show how the idea of gods eventually emerged from them. In his view, human beings first encountered the Infinite when they perceived and named objects that were intangible, such as the Sun, Moon, and stars, or semitangible, such as mountains, rivers, seas, and trees.
It was to such objects that the hymns of the Rigveda were addressed. These hymns were neither polytheistic nor monotheistic but henotheistic (involving worship of one god without denying the existence of other gods): they addressed one object at a time, but they never claimed that it was the only true God. In fact, Müller claimed that, although these natural phenomena provided genuine intimations of the Infinite, they were not originally regarded as gods. If they were called deva ("divine"), a Sanskrit word related to Latin deus ("god"), it was only because they shared the quality of brightness; Müller was especially fond of interpreting myths in terms of solar phenomena. Eventually, however, the objects that shared this and similar qualities were grouped together into classes, conceived of anthropomorphically, and made the subjects of mythology. In terms frequently associated with Müller, the numina (Latin: "deities") were at first nomina (Latin: "names"); mythology was a kind of disease of language.
Quotations:
"Childhood has its secrets and its mysteries; but who can tell or who can explain them!"
"For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an old rule."
"Truthfulness is a luxury, perhaps the greatest, and let me assure you, the most expensive luxury in our life - and happy the man who has been able to enjoy it from his very childhood."
Membership
In 1896 Müller was appointed a member of the Privy Council.
Personality
Max Müller lived in poverty before he was employed by the British.
He was very qualified in Sanskrit. It was also the time when even Indians did not understand the language. His defeat at the 1860 election for the Boden Professorship of Sanskrit was very disappointing for him. According to him, his German birth and lack of practical first-hand knowledge of India went against him.
He strongly believed in the need for reforms in Hinduism in order to superimpose views of Christianity on the former.
Interests
Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit
Philosophers & Thinkers
Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer
Music & Bands
Felix Mendelssohn
Connections
On August 3, 1859, he married Georgina Adelaide Grenfell. Together they had four children, namely Mary, Ada, Beatrice, and Wilhelm Max, among whom two predeceased the couple. Wilhelm also grew up to become an orientalist.
Father:
Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Müller
Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Müller was a German lyric poet.
Mother:
Adelheid von Basedow
Spouse:
Georgina Adelaide Müller (Grenfell)
Daughter:
Beatrice Max Müller
Daughter:
Mary Conybeare (Max Müller)
Daughter:
Ada Max Müller
Son:
Wilhelm Grenfell Max Müller
Wilhelm Grenfell Max Müller was an American orientalist.
